


The Nameless Things

by beng



Series: Arrangements From Afterlife [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Before the quest, Biculturalism, Blue mountains, Character Study, Domains of Language Use, Gen, Khuzdul, Languages and Linguistics, Microtoponymy, Neologisms, Onomatopoeia, Semantics, The Author Regrets Nothing, Traditions, Values, Westron, bilingualism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-07 01:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1880634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beng/pseuds/beng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kili hunts, he hunts alone: not only because archery skills are something of a rarity among the dwarves, but also because you have to be quiet, and how can you be quiet, when there are no iglishmêk signs for half the things you need to say, and sometimes there are even no words in Westron or Khuzdul to explain them.</p><p>So Kili hunts alone, and happily bastardizes all the languages in his head. Sometimes inexplicable things get strange new names. Sometimes the things he does leave even Dis at a loss of words.</p><p>And what's a mother to do?</p><p>(or "How Kili's Attempts to Deal With Semantic Lacunae Ended With Him Going On The Quest". Compatible with Dragonsolver but written as a standalone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A loving dedication to all the exasperating times when, considering myself Latvian and writing in English, I've had to look for a Russian dictionary, because I simply can't think of any other way to say it.
> 
> And a huge thanks to my beta iscatterthemintimeandspace, who bears my occasional bouts of nerdiness with patience and grace, and to reykir, whose wish for "More fics with linguistics as the central theme, yes!" I took as a prompt :)
> 
>  **Underlined words have translations incorporated — just hover your mouse over them.** If a Khuzdul/Sindarin word is not in italics, it means that Kili has hauled it over to Westron grammar and pronunciation (=loanwords).

 

Kili walked briskly, fallen twigs, dry moss and lichen crunching under his boots. It was the beginning of afizh, and it was hot. Glancing up at the midday sun bearing down mercilessly through the thin canopy, the young dwarf sighed and then sat down on the ground. He pulled out his canteen and gulped down the water greedily. With several more miles to go, he should make a small detour and refill it from the Kelskabor. For now, he leaned back against a pine and closed his eyes, listening to his own breathing and the sounds of the forest.

It was rather quiet, the birds busy feeding their young or maybe dozing off in the heat. He didn’t hear any squirrels… scrappering in the trees, and larger animals tended to stay quiet regardless of the time of day. For a moment, he idly pondered what _do_ you call the sound a squirrel makes with its sharp little nails running along the tree bark. It was a rushed scrap-scrap-scrap, to his ears, but he didn’t know if it had any actual name in Westron or in Khuzdul. Rustling? No, probably not. Leaves rustled, and reeds swaying in the wind, but not squirrels.

As he rested, he planned out the route in his head. To reach the Rabbit Glade and not pass out from thirst on his way, he would have to turn east after crossing the large meadow with a lonely birch in the middle, then pass the fir thickets and then continue to the Glade along the Kelskabor Stream. The trick would be to remember to cross it before the ravine it flows in becomes too deep and filled with thorns. Right.

Route decided, Kili stretched and got up, straightened the bow and quiver on his back, slung his burlap sack over his shoulder and continued on his way.

 

***

As he walked, the issue of the nameless squirrel sound would not leave him alone. How could it be that there was no word in either of the languages he knew? He could, of course, ask amad, but he suspected she’d have no idea what he’s talking about. Uncle Thorin might, but he and Fili had gone to Bree on business and were not expected back for another couple of days or so.

He always went hunting alone — mostly because nobody else was any good with a bow. Even if somebody showed any interest, they demonstrated also a complete inability to walk silently or sit quietly in a hideout, or pay attention to the direction of the wind; and even before entering the woods they would ask him a bunch of stupid questions. Kili could patiently track an animal for days, but he honestly couldn’t stand questions like ‘Why archery, Kili?’, ‘What’s so special about those forests, Kili?’ and ‘Where is Rabbit Glade, Kili?’

How do you explain the way to a place that has no name? It was about half a day’s walk north from the dwarven settlements of Ered Luin, and even the Broadbeams, who had lived there long before the exiled remnants of Durin’s Folk settled there, didn’t know it. The majority of their trade routes ran east and south, and only oddballs like Kili ever ventured north. There were no commonly known points of reference for him to use.

There were no names in the forest, except the Kelskabor Stream, which probably should be called either _Celos Cabor_ , or just Frogstream. But somehow it had ended up being called Kelskabor, and Kili actually had no opinion on the matter. He just knew that its water was tastier than that of other nearby streams.

In the forest, he didn’t need names, unless it was some internal monologue, and a large part of his hunting decisions were unconscious to begin with. Explaining them to amad was a bit trickier. She worried about him, and she liked to know where he was going and what to expect. So he had come up with the name Rabbit Glade — that way she knew he’d be gone for a whole day and return with rabbits. If he said he was going to go east of the  Ibtsish mine, she packed him food for three days;  Ubtsish mine — four days and spare socks, because there was a bog on the way.

Names were overrated, Kili decided about an hour later, as he crouched down by the stream and filled up his canteen. You only needed them when talking to other people. When he tried, then Thorin would get upset that he used elven names for some plants, and amad would get upset that his Khuzdul was slowly deteriorating. Fili would just smile in that calm manner of his and counter that there were many metalworking tools and processes that had a name only in Khuzdul, so who cares about a few plant names.

That was why Kili avoided talking with his kin about the woods — he simply didn’t have the words for it. But despite all that, the forest remained, and smelled, and tasted regardless of how you called it.

 

***

Breaking his way through some briar, because of course he had been too scatterbrained to cross the ravine in time, Kili almost missed the small whimper coming from somewhere to his right. He stopped and hesitated. The only small animals he was interested in right now were the rabbits, and he still had some miles to go.

The unseen creature whimpered again.

Kili got down on all fours and peered under the bushes. Something brown with white spots moved in the green shadows and sobbed quietly.

“ _Umkhusith_ ,” he murmured in surprise. “ _Kuŋ amadizu, lavammuzmnâtul?_ ”

There was no way a doe would have left her baby in such impenetrable mess of thorns. Most probably, the little one had blundered in there after its mother had not come back to it. Kili straightened up and scratched his head. He hadn’t thought there were any wolves left this close to the dwarf settlements, not after he dealt with the three remaining ones last winter. He hadn’t seen any traces of a new pack either, but what else could have happened to the mother doe?

“Come out, _mimurith_ ,” he crooned, bending down again. The fawn gave a sad squeal and tried to move away from Kili’s hand. Cursing under his breath, Kili lunged forward into the thorns, caught the fawn by its hind leg and pulled the scared animal out of the briar. “Hush now, ghivash,” he soothed the weakly kicking fawn until it just gave up. “Hush…”

Tucking the deer securely under his arm, he collected his gear and traced back his steps out of the ravine. Then he sat down cross-legged in the moss and put the fawn down in front of him. The little beast was visibly starved, with ribs poking through the matted, dusty brown coat. With another whimper it tried to stand up, and fell down, thin legs too weak to support its weight. Then the fawn sighed in resignation — or at least it sounded like a sigh — lay down its head and closed its large, sickly dim eyes.

Kili ran a hand through his dark hair. He didn’t know what to do. Did he have to do anything? Even if there was no new wolf pack come down from the north, it was clear that the fawn was a goner if left in the forest. And in case there was, then it was not safe for Kili either. He should return home and fetch his sword, before venturing out again. But what to do with the deer?

His hand was on the fawn’s back, stroking it absent-mindedly. The matted fur still felt silky and soft under his palm, and he could feel every vertebra in its spine, every rib. The spotted flanks were rising and falling as the little deer took shallow, irregular breaths. Kili touched its nose, which was hot and dry, and the fawn tried to lick his fingers.

“ _Odhr bakhuz Adadel..._ ” Kili cursed under his breath. He pulled the fawn into his lap, uncorked his canteen and poured some water into its upturned mouth that he was holding with his other hand. It felt strange to have his rough, big hands on something so small, silky and fragile.

“Amad’s gonna disown me,” he told the deer in grim seriousness. “But you will die here if I leave you, and though I might have shot some of your relatives last month, I do not kill babies. So you’re coming with me.”

Having made the fawn drink the rest of his water, Kili carefully folded the ridiculously long-legged creature into his sack and got up again. He looked at the sun and sighed. With a sickly fawn on his back, he would have to go slower, and he would be home late. On the other hand, he’d have more time to come up with some sort of an explanation for his mother.

But how do you call the heart-stopping feeling that runs through you when something so small and gentle licks your fingers?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more or less finished in 3 chapters and 6600 words. And yes, this is a case of my muse being on caffeine — to the point where she starts bending the local HTML.


	2. Chapter 2

Kili kicked the garden gate closed behind him and briskly walked up to the house, where a soft, welcoming light was painting a path from the kitchen window. Amad was probably worried. He always returned from the Rabbit Glade before the sunset, but this time, stars were already out bright in the late summer sky.

Repositioning the burlap sack in front of him, he pushed open the door and entered.

“Maaaam! I’m home!” he shouted. Still holding his sack, he quickly threw down his bow and quiver, toed off his boots and then barged into the kitchen. “Your smart and valiant son has returned safe and sound! And almost unscathed!”

Dis stopped her humming and glanced up from where she was sitting at the table. She had been pitting cherries, her hands blood-red with the juice.

“So smart he fell into a raspberry bush?” she asked, waving at Kili’s scratched face and hands, her dark blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What happened? Are you injured?”

Kili brushed her off. “No matter. Neither the late hour, nor mosquitos or briars, nor other pests or plants of the boundless wilderness that is Ered Luin can harm thy offspring, _amaduh ghelekh_.”

The dark-haired matron rolled her eyes and reluctantly dropped the subject. She could worry all she wanted, but she had to trust her son to know when he needed help and when not. For all his easy-going nature, he could be quite stubborn.

Kili carefully placed his sack on a chair and untied the string. “Look what I got.”

Dis shrugged and picked up another handful of cherries from the bowl.

“Put the rabbits in the basement, dear,” she murmured. “We can smoke them tomorrow. It’s late already.”

Kili blinked. “Ermm… I didn’t get to the Glade, amad. I was passing through the woods and crossing the Kelskabor ravine upstream, where it’s terribly thorny…”

His mother raised an eyebrow. “Who’d have thought. What did you find then?”

“This.”

Dis frowned as, casting an embarrassed look at her, Kili folded down the edges of his sack and revealed a small reddish-brown creature that was still breathing shallowly. “It’s a fawn, couple weeks old,” he said. “Found her in the briar.”

Dis leaned across the table and stared at the animal. It was weak and sickly, with pus oozing from its eyes and nose. The large ears seemed infected too, and it was not even clear whether the fawn was sleeping or awake. Its only movement was the almost imperceptible rise and fall of its white-spotted ribcage.

“It will die before the morning,” she grimly forecasted. “Why did you even bring it here?”

Kili scratched his head and plopped down in the other chair facing his mother. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “She was so small and sad, I just couldn’t leave her there.”

Still frowning, Dis got up and washed her hands in a basin. She didn’t know what to say. This was not the first time her beardless, senseless, reckless son did something strange, but until now she had somehow managed to dismiss it. But to have a deer in the home was downright ridiculous.

“Dwarves have no use for wild animals,” she said. “You won’t kill this one for meat, and it gives neither wool, nor milk. It’s useless.”

“But she’s beautiful,” Kili argued, “or will be when she grows up. And deer are actually quite smart too. We could teach her to eat the weeds, and if not, what’s the harm anyway in having her graze in the orchard?”

“It’s a wild forest animal, Kili. Where do you see the beauty in that? It’s not something you’ve improved over generations of breeding, it’s not something you’ve carved out of stone or metal,” she objected, waving her hand dismissively. “You just went and picked it up like some... like some pine cone or mushroom. There has been no effort in it, no skill or wisdom!”

Kili sighed. He had pulled the half-dead creature into his lap and was using one of Dis’ kitchen towels to clean its face. Noticing that, she swatted him on the head and snatched it away.

“I needed that!” Kili protested. “Give me some rags then!”

Dis threw the dirty piece of linen into the fireplace and turned on him, hands on hips. She was suddenly angry, caught up in her worry and love (and was that blood on Kili’s face?), and all his small oddities and gaps in his knowledge of culture and history were suddenly piling up into a whole tower of being different, of not understanding. Thorin was not at home enough, and all the things that were so important to her seemed to be sinking further and further into the mists of time…

“That beast is most probably full of tapeworms, bugs, ticks and fleas!” she snapped, because anger she understood better than what the Blue Mountains were doing to her son. “It is _cruel_ to prolong its suffering, and it’s downright stupid to keep it in the house!”

“I was not…”

“And don’t even _think_ about putting it in with the goats! Now get it out of my kitchen and _wash your hands_! Mahal knows how late it is, and you need to eat, and then I’m going to bed, and in the morning I don’t want to see that festering beast anywhere in the house, _is that clear_?”

“Perfectly,” Kili spat through clenched teeth, picked up the fawn in his hands and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Dis huffed in annoyance and hit a cupboard with her fist. A half-dead deer in the house! Honestly!

 

***

Kili sat down on the front steps, the fawn securely in his lap. Of course, he hadn’t expected his mother to be thrilled. Dis wasn’t particularly well-known for kindness or patience, and she was a very pragmatic woman. Of course, she didn’t see any point in keeping a deer.

Nonetheless, Kili intended to do just that, because not everything in life had to have a point or serve a purpose. He would mow a bit more hay for the winter, and then repair the stall closer to the barn door where there were occasional drafts. The goats didn’t like it anyway, but the deer should be alright there. Those were just small things. They didn’t cost them anything but they meant that the brown-eyed _mimurith_ would stay alive.

Under the bright light of the moon, he had found some old towels, filled a bucket with water from the well and collected some panlas leaves that grew just outside the fence. He patiently cleaned the pus from the animal’s ears, eyes and nose, washed the dirt from her cleft little feet and brushed out the twigs from her tawny coat. The baby deer was too weak to struggle and only squeaked now and then when Kili touched its sensitive nose or feet.

“You’re not useless,” he murmured, gently stroking the fawn with his calloused hands. “You’ll find your place among the Longbeards, my girl. Because you are a smart little girl, with funny ears and wobbly legs, aren’t you? We just need to get you strong and healthy, and amad will be secretly feeding you carrots in no time, you’ll see.”

As his thoughts turned to his mother, Kili’s hands stilled. He simply held the little deer in his lap as he gazed at the moonlit garden in front of him.

How could amad say what dwarves did or didn’t have use for?

Calendula, red currant, sorrel, columbine, foxglove… None of these plants had a name in Khuzdul. Panlas leaf didn’t even have a name in Westron — it got its name from the elves, and everyone in the Blue Mountains called it that, even if they hated the arrogant durugnuls. Heck, the majority of locals even called the mountains Ered Luin.

The dwarves of Erebor were not farmers or gardeners. Before Smaug came, they hadn’t needed to know the names of the plants, or how to find your way in the forest, or how to fish or hunt.  They had had their own underground mushroom farms and bat caves, with Dale and Esgaroth providing them with grain and beef, while the dwarves busied themselves with what they considered more worthy crafts.

But they were not in Erebor anymore, and now his mother had a garden. She weeded and watered, and cursed all pests, and crushed all snails, while her son, a prince of the line of Durin, snuck up on rabbits and laid beaver traps along flooded streams that bore elven names. It was a different world, but his mother continued to live in the glorious past. Well, it was glorious, no doubt about that, but Kili didn’t mind his present life either.

“Alright, ghivash,” Kili murmured. “I’ll get you some box to sleep in, and some milk. Then sleep and get better. Your only job right now is to prove my mother wrong and not die before the morning…”

 

***

Dis woke up in a sour mood. She hadn’t slept well. It had been too hot, and she had been angry with Kili. Then she had started worrying about how her other son and Thorin were doing on their travels, and when they were going to come back, and…

And as she’d tossed and turned, she had come to a miserable realization that Kili was not just taller or lankier than other dwarves his age. He was not a true Longbeard, not in his heart, and it had nothing to do with his preference for a bow.

It was a shameful thought, Dis knew, and she would never voice it. She loved him all the same, but… But her boy was born under the open sky of the West, not in the ancient halls of Erebor. This was the only life he knew, and it was a hard life. Thorin and Balin had taught him as well as they could, but often he had skipped his lessons because something more urgent had come up, like the need to fix a leaking roof or remove a fallen tree from the road, or prepare mink furs for sale. 

He had avoided Thorin’s forge whenever he could, and knew only the bare minimum of metalworking. The most he could do was fix a scythe or a ploughshare, while Fili forged his own daggers and Thorin could make anything from a nail to a  _shulkzagar_. What made the matters worse was that he spent so much time alone in the woods, while Fili at least had Thorin to help him keep alive their teachings and traditions, the memory of their days of pride and plenty.

Instead her youngest son had learned the surrounding forests like his pocket. He wouldn’t know granite from feldspar, and he’d probably have a very short life as a miner, but he could build from ground up. He knew all sorts of plants, he knew when wild animals had babies and when to look for quail eggs, and when the fur animals had the thickest coats. Dis honestly wondered where he had managed to gather all that knowledge, considering that there was only so much the local Broadbeams and the few Men passing through could teach him. But he was a smart boy, attentive and quick to learn, and he had been hunting for years.

And now he had brought home a _deer_.

Remembering that particular detail, Dis cast off her blanket and fished out her shoes from under the bed. She quickly dressed and tied on her apron — today she planned to finish with the cherry preserves and then start washing the bed sheets. And she really had to talk with her offspring before Thorin came home and saw this whole nonsense.

 

***

Surprisingly enough, she found her youngest already up and about, sitting on the front steps and peeling potatoes for lunch. The fawn was still with him, sitting in a box filled with straw and watching Kili’s hands and the nearby flowers that were swaying in the soft breeze. It looked weak and somewhat lethargic, but still better than the previous night.

“Would you look at that,” she muttered. “The little pest is still alive.”

“Morning, mother!” Kili grinned over his shoulder. “I live to disappoint.”

“Not you, dolt.” Dis sat down on Kili’s other side and sighed. He knew she hated peeling potatoes, so of course he had got up early to peel potatoes. He was clever like that, the little sod, and it worked. She didn’t want to argue anymore.

“ _What_ are you going to do with it?” she asked.

The lad shrugged and glanced at his strange pet. The animal had curled up in a ball and tucked its nose into its spotted side. “She’s… I don’t know. I can’t explain.”

Dis turned towards him and now they were both staring at the little creature. Try as she might, she only saw something goat-like at best, except more useless. She glanced at her son and saw him frowning too.

“Try,” she nudged him gently. “Try to explain.”

Kili bit his lip and started peeling the potato again. When he was confused or worried, he always tried to busy his hands. Dis sat quietly, waiting.

“We… We live here in the West,” Kili started and then faltered. “I help around the house and repair the fence, and chop wood, and Uncle Thorin travels around chasing… chasing shadows. And drags Fili with him, and sometimes me too, when Dwalin or Bifur can stay and make sure you are safe. But when Thorin’s home…” Kili brushed his hair back with his forearm, hands dirty with starch.

“When Thorin’s home, you both switch to Khuzdul, and… you chase those shadows together. You talk of impenetrable walls, of deep mine shafts, and gems, and gold, and vaulted halls. You remember… bat milk cream and soup from those… what you call them, those pale, blind fish living in the freezing underground pools; and mushroom plantations, and all those other things you never get anymore, because you don’t live under a mountain.”

Dis listened, hands folded in her lap, a light frown between her brows.

“And I hear it all, I think it’s beautiful. I would have liked to live there, to… to see all that glory for myself, to figure out the forges and the angled mirrors casting light into the deepest shafts, and how those damn arches are actually working…” Kili trailed off, biting his lip again.

“Wait,” Dis murmured, feeling that he needed a moment to gather his thoughts. She got up and went into the house, and when she came back, she was holding a simple metal clasp. “Let’s get that hair out of your face.”

Eyes closed, Kili rested his head against her stomach, allowing Dis to comb her fingers through his dark locks. He never bothered with braids. Dis sometimes wondered why, but he’d usually make some joke about it and just brush her off.

“You’ve never shown any interest in Thorin’s forge,” she noted carefully as she weaved a simple braid from his right temple. “And how is this all connected with bringing home half-dead deer?”

Kili’s hand had travelled to the sleeping fawn at his side, and he was gently scratching its bony withers.

“Everything we have, is very… useful,” he said slowly. “Utilitarian — even the flowers, which can all be used as herbs or teas, or spices...”

“I remember… I had more colourful clothes when I was little. Me and Fili had some funny capes with bright blue hoods… You used to embroider, amad. Now you only patch our clothes. Mahal knows how old the embossed belts and bags are…”

Dis frowned and switched to his other temple.

“You know very well that everyone’s faring worse, it’s not just us,” she said. “And your uncle is right in not pushing for any privileges, when…”

“It’s not that, mother,” Kili interrupted her with a sigh. “I guess I just wanted something beautiful. Something… Something without any specific use or purpose,” he murmured, eyes still closed.

Dis glanced down at the creature sleeping in its box at her feet, and her frown grew deeper. She still could not understand. Her son wanted something beautiful and brought home _this_? By Durin’s beard, the _shed_ he had built was more beautiful than that beast! Dis shook her head in confusion, as Kili suddenly opened his eyes, a triumphant smile lighting up his face.

“ _Sanshartûmb_ ,” he said.

Dis fixed the clasp in his hair and sat down on the steps again. “That’s not a word.”

“But it's what I mean.”

“You just invented it. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, it does,” Kili chuckled, touching his braids to see what she had done and then picking up another potato. “I’m just not telling you, because you’re being mean to my deer.”

Dis growled. “You simply took some Khuzdul words and slapped them together in some meaningless construct, and that’s not something you do with Khuzdul! It’s a sacred language, Kili, devised by Mahal and handed down through countless generations…”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Kili interrupted her again, still smirking. “Anyway, the deer’s name is Sorrel. She fits in with with the dwarves just as much as the plant.”

This time Dis found absolutely nothing to say. She gathered her skirt and went into the house, with her head held high and a foreboding chill slowly growing in her chest. It was a feeling that something somewhere in her child's upbringing had gone very, very wrong, and that she had missed the chance to make it right. Heart aching, she suspected that moment might have been a long time ago.

The exiled princess, mother of two, sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the bowl of cherries, seriously trying to remember anything her late husband might have said about his parents. It had to be his side of the family. Either that, or the air of the Blue Mountains itself, which was… was poisoning … devouring the soul of her son.

That night, the sun set in a sky just as blood-red as the cherry juice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kili might be incredibly lucky with his timing, but the fact remains that Thorin Oakenshield almost always has bigger things to worry about. 
> 
> Awesomely checked (and some parts married) by iscatterthemintimeandspace.

“KILI!”

Kili growled and turned over on his stomach. “Kili doesn’t want to get up,” he mumbled sleepily. He’d been out celebrating a friend’s birthday almost till dawn. Surely there was nothing wrong with sleeping in every now and then?

The next thing he knew he was suddenly drowning — cold water splashed over his sprawling form, his blanket and bed sheets simply flooded, and wet, tangled hair in his eyes, and  _fucking Fili laughing his arse off_ , an empty bucket rolling at his feet.

“I’ll get you for that!” he yelled, as he disentangled himself from the soggy sheets and sprinted after the blond, out of the room and into the yard, where he was greeted with another bucket of water and a deep, remorseless chuckle.

“You!” dressed in nothing but a thoroughly wet shirt, Kili gasped, pointing an accusing finger at his uncle. “You are the uncrowned king of our people! You should behave yourself!"

Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, was laughing — carelessly, freely, his face lit up and his whole stature relaxed and happy. For a moment Kili couldn’t believe it really was his proud, sombre uncle. Then he was crushed to his chest, his face buried in the black mane streaked with silver, clothes smelling of camp-fires and ponies, and the oil he used on his scale mail, and long miles on the road. His uncle Thorin.

“Alright, what’s going on?” Kili demanded when Thorin finally let him go, and was hit in the back of his head with a towel.

“First go change, and then get the bed sheets out,” his mother ordered, standing in the doorway and watching her approaching brother with suspicion. “I was going to wash them anyway, before these two…Ouff! Thorin, I can’t breathe!”

With the towel over his shoulder, Kili punched his brother in the stomach and then tightly hugged the winded blond.

“Thought you knew better by now than try and wrestle me down in the dirt,” Fili gasped.

“Welcome back,” Kili whispered, resting his head on the blond’s shoulder and feeling his brother’s arms tightening around him. Even if he was cold and wet, and half-naked, this was the best morning he’d had in a long while.

Suddenly his eyes widened, and he pushed Fili away.

“You idiot! Sorrel must be dripping wet, if she didn’t get a heart attack! I put her box right beside my bed!”

Pushing aside his mother and uncle, he dashed back into the house. The last words he heard was Fili’s gobsmacked confusion:

“Ma…? He got a girlfriend? Why’s she in a box…?”

 

***

Neither Kili, nor Dis could wait for the news. Bedsheets were thrown haphazardly near the washing tub behind the house, Sorrel was carried out in the orchard and left to dry in the sun, and right after Kili had got into some pants and tunic, they all brought some bread and jam from the kitchen and plopped down around the deer on the grass. To his sister's surprise and dismay, Thorin cast one look at the animal and at Kili, raised an eyebrow, and then simply dismissed the whole thing. Either the news were that good, or they were simply so much more important.

“Why is there blackberry jam?” he teased her instead. “It’s  _âfizhu_ , we should be eating something simple.”

“Bread and jam not simple enough for you? You have to eat it, this batch is from the last year, and I have no place for this summer’s,” Dis snapped.

Kili glared at his brother. “Girlfriend? Are you nuts?”

“A fine lass, forest-born, and would you look at those ears!” Fili continued unfazed, sprawled out in the grass and licking jam from his fingers. “And legs! Finest legs in the West, if I say so myself!”

“Shut up!”

“Twice as many as on any dwarf maid!”

“Fili…”

“Tell me, are you into spots and tails, or is it just part of the package?”

“Enough!” Dis cut off the inane bickering and then turned pointedly towards her brother. “Now  _tell us_ ,” she urged.

Thorin solemnly finished chewing and swallowed, an amused flame dancing in his eyes. Dis pursed her lips in suspicion. What, in the name of Mahal, had happened in Bree? She hadn’t seen her brother acting like this for years!

“We,” he declared, “are going to take back Erebor.”

Kili glanced at his brother, while Dis stared at hers.

“How?” she finally asked.

“Like we always planned to — by joining the forces of all seven houses and driving Smaug out of the mountain.”

“But you’ve wanted to do this for ages!” Dis bristled. “And you know you can’t, not without the Arkenstone to unite them!”

With a smug grin, Thorin reached for the jam and started making himself another sandwich.

“This time, dear sister, we’ll split it in two parts. And part one will involve a burglar…”

 

 ***

The arguing had started immediately after the brothers had eagerly volunteered to accompany Thorin on his quest and their uncle had said a simple and resounding ‘No’.

Even Dis had been taken aback by his rejection. Fili and Kili had tried to reason with him, had tried pointing out their skills and experience and the fact that they were his heirs and nephews. Thorin wouldn’t budge.

Eventually, Fili had stormed off, presumably to see some of his friends, while Dis, evidently annoyed, disturbed and unhappy, had started the washing. Kili had filled up the tub for her and then gone to fix the broken stall in the goat barn. Thorin had brushed down the ponies, let them out in the paddock and then gone to talk with Balin.

Kili was good at noticing things, and that included reading people. He saw their needs and motivations as clearly as animal tracks in the forest, and following those clues, he found his place in any group, effortlessly gravitating to where he was needed the most. He knew how people worked, and it made him a good friend — even if few ever appreciated this subtle skill of the scruffy, beardless hunter.

As he moved around the yard to get something from the house, to bring more water for washing or to move Sorrel’s box into shade, Kili could see his mother gradually making up her mind. He narrowed his eyes as he passed her by and tried to guess which side she was taking: theirs or Thorin’s. He could understand her worry. The question was, did her worry outweigh her pride and sense of duty?

Kili bit his lip, thinking. He _wanted_ to go to Erebor. He wanted to see for himself all the wonders amad and uncle had been telling him and Fili about since they were little. He decided to try something. He could be wrong, and then he’d be in trouble for trying to manipulate his own mother, but if he was right and did nothing, then he and his brother might miss something that was a… a holy _gangbashag_ to take back their homeland.

 

***

Dis stared glumly at the fire burning beneath the washing tub. The first portion of sheets and pillowcases was drying on the line, and now she was waiting to wash the other half. She glanced down at her hands, wrinkled and red from the water. She felt a tightness growing in her throat as she remembered the exquisite embroidery these same hands had been capable of. Now she didn’t have the time, didn’t have the silk threads and beautiful, soft fabrics, and even if she’d had them, nobody needed anything like that in the Blue Mountains. Here, they needed clean laundry and good lunch. But she had been taught to do so much more, to _be_ so much more…

There was now this slim chance that Erebor could be theirs again. It was madness, but at the same time…

“Maaam!” came a shout from around the corner, and Dis’ head shot up. Moments later, her youngest appeared with a smoking frying pan in his hand and a guilty grimace on his face. “I burned the potatoes,” he said. “I was going to make lunch, but…”

Dis pursed her lips. Kili had peeled a whole bucket yesterday, so she had boiled them all, planning to simply reheat them today. Now he had burned that little culinary respite of hers to a bitter, black coal.

“Didn’t you watch them?” she grumbled. “I’ve told you a thousand times to not step foot out of the kitchen when you’re cooking. Now look what you’ve done.”

Kili drew an even guiltier face. “Sorry, amad.”

Sighing, Dis got up from her bench and took the still smoking pan from Kili. “Throw in the sheets when the water boils, and add the soap. There’s the stirring stick by the wall. Don’t mess up this too.”

As she walked around to the main door, she grimly noticed that the bottom of the pan was almost falling out in places. How did he manage to burn it to such condition? She didn’t even know her stove was capable of such temperatures. Now Thorin or Fili would have to fix it, as if they didn’t have enough things to worry about already.

Stepping inside the house, Dis almost tripped over Kili’s hunting gear. So that’s what he’d been doing instead of watching potatoes — fletching his arrows! Dis growled. Deer in the orchard, hunting arrows in the front hall, and was that…? Yes, there were panlas leaves drying on her kitchen table.

“Worthless weeds,” Dis snarled, brushing the leaves into the waste bucket. The charred potatoes followed suit. She put the pan in the dirty dish bowl and then braced herself against the kitchen counter. She shouldn’t be doing dishes, and her son shouldn’t be washing bed sheets. He also shouldn’t be spending half his time in the woods, or mending fences, or milking goats, or weeding, or chopping wood. By Durin’s axe, her sons were princes! Princes, who were supposed to carry on the legacy of her people, not mangle their ancient language or conveniently forget all traditions they didn’t like. It was _âfizhu,_ and you don’t drink ale on _âfizhu!_ Where had Kili been last night if not in the tavern? Where was Fili now?

Seething in anger, Dis grabbed her son’s unfinished mug of tea and launched it against the wall, where it shattered with a dull crash. Log walls never gave her the satisfaction she sought — but they were built by the hard-working, uncomplaining hands of her husband and her brother. Dis bent to pick up the clay shards and suddenly sobbed.

She hated this life, but it was a life. She missed the boys’ father. She had lost so much, and now she could lose her sons as well. But if they stayed here, what hope was there for the future?

The princess slid down the wall until she was kneeling on the floor, broken shards twisted in her apron and silent tears running down her cheeks. She pressed her face to the wall and inhaled the smell of the timber. Her husband was dead, and she longed for stone. She prayed the quest was not just an adventure to her sons. She prayed they still heard the stone speaking to them in their blood.

 

***

The sun was setting over the ridges of the Blue Mountains. Kili sat on the bench behind the house and listened to his mother and uncle arguing inside. The log walls did nothing to muffle the harsh, sharp tones of Khuzdul, because of course they shouted at each other in the language of their ancestors.

“ _No! Absolutely no, Dis, I’m not taking them on that trip!_ ”

“ _You think they’re too young? Thorin, you fought the battle of Azanulbizar when you were barely fifty-three!_ ”

“ _I know they’re adults!_ ”

“ _What then? You trained them yourself!_ ”

“ _Mahal smite thee, woman, it’s half a world away! Do you understand what you’re asking of me?!_ ”

“ _They are your heirs, and they must go, Thorin!_ ”

“ _I… I cannot be responsible for them! This is not a war, the people I will be taking with me — and I don’t even know who will answer my summons — I will consider myself lucky if_ some _of them are warriors. Your sons will not be safe, and I just… Dis, I CAN’T break my heart in two if I ever have to choose between them and Erebor!_ ”

“ _Thorin… I am not asking you to choose… Just… take them with you. They must see the Mountain. They must, or there will be nobody to continue your life’s work, brother. Our people will erode to dust, and all will be lost. Take them to the East before it’s too late!_ ”

The young dwarf stared at the bed sheets drying on the line in front of him and tried very hard to think about something else. He felt bad for causing his mother pain, even if the push had been very light, and the majority of her anguish had already been there. Also, she had broken his favourite mug, and Thorin could still say no.

The sheets were rustling in the barely perceptible evening breeze, white and light grey against the red and purple of the setting sun, the woods behind the house a solid black wall. Kili stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. He closed his eyes and tried not to wonder what Khuzdul might sound like echoing in endless halls.

An owl was hooting in the firs. Tawny or barn owl?... Tawny. Fili used to call it brown owl — he liked to mess with people like that. ‘Barn owl or brown owl?’ he’d ask with a completely straight face.

Khuzdul only had a name for owls in general —  _bahyurzundûsh_  — and that was not even a proper name. It just meant ‘wisdom bird’. Like a lynx was a ‘mountain cat’ —  _abadpundur_. Kili smirked. It seemed Mahal had run out of imagination where nature was concerned.

But on the other hand there was  _sanshartûmb_  — a smoke-like softness, a gentle silkiness that could break your heart and then reforge it anew. Surely Mahal could have no objections to the existence of such word? Why had amad been so upset about it?

Kili reached out his hand and stroked his deer, who was lying on the bench by his side. She seemed alright with goat milk, growing stronger by the hour. Soon Kili would have to figure out how to keep her away from amad’s vegetables and flowerbeds. Put her in the goat paddock? Return her to the forest? He wasn’t sure she would survive. Anyway, he’d like to find out what happened to her mother, whether wolves had really returned to these parts, or it had been just some accident. And if a miracle happened and Thorin relented, then Kili would like to be sure that there were no beasts of prey remaining in the nearby woods.

“Kili,” a deep voice roused him from his musings. “Thought I’d find you here.”

“You know me, Uncle,” he responded as Thorin sat down on his other side and pulled out his pipe.

For a while they just sat there in the gathering darkness, listening to the chirping of grasshoppers and the silent rustling of sheets. Thorin blew out a smoke ring.

“We leave soon after the Spring Festival,” he said.

Kili blinked in disbelief, breath catching in his throat. “I... I thought you didn’t want us to come?”

The older dwarf let out a low growl. “Your mother convinced me,” he said. “Something about you two losing your roots, your stone sense.”

“If it’s about the deer…”

“Not only, Kili. Not only that.” Thorin sighed and leaned back against the wall. Without his usual scowl, he suddenly appeared much older than his years.

“It will be dangerous,” he continued after a while. “Gandalf promised to find us a burglar, and I have no idea who it will be. I have no idea who will join us. Any attempt to retake the Lonely Mountain borders on madness — everyone’s been telling me that for more years than I care to count. But you are both adults, and good fighters, and even your mother thinks you should come. So…”

“So, of course we’ll come,” Kili quickly agreed, still not believing what he was hearing. Although — he had been planning for a miracle moments before Thorin joined him, right?

"Then so be it," Thorin said. "But only under three conditions."

"What conditions?"

"First, you cut down your wandering in the woods to the bare minimum and take up training with Dwalin again, at least twice a week. The exact schedule I leave for him to decide."

Kili nodded eagerly. "Alright."

"Second," Thorin continued, "you forget I'm your uncle. For the duration of the quest, I am your leader, so don't expect any favours. Don't tell people we're related — I have enemies, and I don't want you two to risk your lives any more than you already do by coming with me. And you comply with my every command. Understood?"

Kili nodded again. It didn't sound so different from their other travels along the Greenway or to Bree.

"And third?" he asked.

"Third," Thorin turned to him, looking Kili in the eye with absolute seriousness. "Never, _ever_ come between me and Erebor. Keep yourself and your brother out of harm's way. Don't ever make me choose, Kili."

Again, the young hunter could only nod. He wouldn't dream of getting in his uncle's way. But he _was_ going to Erebor!

“What about amad?” he asked, torn between worry and victorious elation. “She’ll stay here alone?”

Thorin snorted. “Good luck convincing  _her_  to stay, when we’re all going.”

Kili chuckled. “But we have time till spring, right?”

“Aye…”

Thorin’s profile was barely visible in the darkness now. He finished his pipe and slowly knocked out the ash.

Kili’s hand had stilled on the deer’s head, and he breathed in deeply. Smoke, and silk, and a lightness of being that came from knowing all his loved ones would be sleeping at home tonight and that he was joining the expedition, after all.

“Uncle?” he ventured. Thorin grumbled non-committedly.

“What do you call that sound that a squirrel makes running up and down a tree?”

His uncle paused in surprise and then chuckled.

“Scampering? Skittering?” he tried. “It’s  _zurmmuzmnâtaklat_  if you want Khuzdul.”

Kili stared at him in disbelief. “You can't be serious,” he said. “I ask around, and nobody knows what’s it called, and you tell me it has a name in Khuzdul? That dwarves came up with a name for something so… so forest-related?”

He could almost hear Thorin grinning in the darkness. “ _Zurm-muzm-nât-aklat_ ,” he repeated more slowly, and Kili rolled his eyes in sudden understanding.

“’Tree tail-beast sound’,” he translated. “Unbelievable. You really call it just ‘squirrel sound’.”

Thorin seemed to shrug. “Why not? Sounds more descriptive than ‘skittering’.”

Kili pondered it for a minute. Indeed, why not?

“But then… how is _zurmmuzmnâtaklat_ different from _sanshartûmb_?” he asked. “Why does there exist something as ridiculous as ‘tree tail-beast sound’ but ‘perfect smoke touch’ is something unacceptable?”

Thorin hummed. “It’s something you invented, isn’t it? Something you needed, and found no other words for it?”

Kili shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I needed it.”

“Then use it. Where do you think _zurmmuzmnât_ comes from? Some ancestor of yours saw a squirrel and needed a word for it. He invented it, and then told everyone about it. People started using the word, and there you have it.”

“So… What about Mahal crafting Khuzdul in its perfect form, never to be changed? Amad says I’m mangling it.”

Warm light started peeking out behind the window shutters beside their bench as somebody brought a candle into the room. Kili saw Thorin sit up and run a hand through his thick, dark hair.

“You’re not,” he murmured. “It’s…” Thorin waved at the mountains rising in front of them. “It lets the language live,” he finally said. “I've seen enough deaths in my life. I’d prefer to have new words spring up in Khuzdul, than be forced to use Westron for half the things I need to say."

“You, Kili, are as much in charge of Khuzdul as that ancestor who invented the name for the squirrel. Use it. Bend it. Make it serve you, and as long as it makes sense grammatically and everyone understands what you mean, _create_. It is your language too, my deer-owning sister-son.”

Kili chuckled. Standing up, Thorin clapped him lightly on the shoulder and then went inside, leaving him with Sorrel. The little deer nudged his hand with her wet, cool nose, and Kili brought her in his lap, glancing up at the emerging stars, a wide smile stretching across his face.

It seemed he had underestimated Khuzdul. With squirrel sounds and smoke touches, the ancient tongue was reaching out to him, greeting the surface-born archer as warmly as it did his mother and uncle. The harsh sounds were willing to enter his forest, to explain and describe it in unpronounceable words of unforgivable length, words that made perfect sense when taken apart, and even more sense when strung together.

And stringing words together made new words with new meanings, and amad was wrong thinking it sacrilege. His  _sanshartûmb_  was no different from his Rabbit Glade. If he told enough people what it was, it would become a real word, like  _zurmmuzmnâtaklat_.

Kili smiled, feeling the light breathing of the  _umkhusith_  under his hand. A barrier he had never even noticed before was crumbling in his mind, fusing together his languages and his homelands, timber and stone, fields and glades and underground dwellings. He laughed, impatient to go on that mad quest with his uncle.

Something beautiful was waiting for him in the East.

 

============ LINGUISTICS NOTES =============

  * Westron is Kili’s mother tongue, and Khuzdul was taught as a secondary language. If he lived in Erebor, he would be encompassed by the living language environment, but in exile dwarves prefer to speak Westron, so he’s slowly forgetting or messing up his Khuzdul, or treating it as some dead language frozen in time.
  * Microtoponyms are place names of small geographic objects — streams, ravines, meadows and such. They serve as a point of reference understood by more than one person, and since nobody in the Blue Mountains is really using the parts of the forest where Kili usually hunts, no such place names exist. The only exceptions are Kelskabor, which is supposed to be a leftover from times when elves had more influence in the region, and the Ibtsish and Ubtsish mines, which would be leftovers from the larger dwarven settlements in previous ages.
  * Kili tends to loan words, adapting them to Westron grammar and pronunciation — afizh, amad, ghivash, durugnul. The reason is semantic gaps in Westron — no word to precisely convey a concept, probably due to a shade in meaning or emotional/traditional connotations. If a precise counterpart exists ( _bahyurzundush_ = owl) then there is no semantic grounds for loaning.
  * The principle of concision, however, means that, even if a precise counterpart or translation exists ( _Adadel_ = lit. ‘father of all fathers’), he may be tempted to use the shorter word.
  * This principle also predicts that Kili will not loan the Khuzdul word for ‘squirrel sound’ (a non-existent word in Westron), but calque (directly translate) it instead, because “squirrel sound” is shorter and more easy to incorporate in Westron than “z _urmmuzmnâtaklat_ ”. [Tauriel, in Dragonsolver, also tends to calque: her seemingly formal confirmations where she just rephrases the question (“So I can come?” — “You can.”) are a grammatical calque from Sindarin, where there is no “yes”.]
  * Kili rarely switches languages completely, but there are domains where he feels Khuzdul works better — mainly family matters and endearments, because Khuzdul is a synthetic, agglutinative language that allows for organic, more emotionally expressive diminutives ( _mimurith_  vs.  _tiny little one_ ) and creative word formation ( _lavammuzmnâtul, sanshartûmb_ ). It is also a sort of ceremonial language, so it fits well in contexts where he wants to add pathos (“Neither the late hour, nor mosquitoes or briars...”).
  * He also curses in Khuzdul, because that language with its fricatives, consonant clusters  and uvular R’s (remember “ _Imrid amrad ursul!_ ” by Thorin), is so much harsher than Westron, more suited to expressing anger or dismay.
  * Talking to other people has a self-censoring effect, so at home, talking to his family, his language appears less messed up than in his head, although he has to struggle to find words sometimes. Not in all domains, of course — this is still Kili we’re talking about — but where the level of detail provided by the language does not match the level of detail from his sensory input. For example, for an average dwarf walking through a forest, describing it in Khuzdul would not pose any major difficulties. For Kili it does, because the level of detail he perceives is so much higher than average. Fili would have similar problems explaining in Westron what’s a  _shulkzagar_ , and Dis would have problems describing cave agriculture and the traditional dwarf cuisine.



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this story at least half as much as I did writing it! ^^
> 
> P.S. In Latvian, a squirrel 'skrapšķina'.


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